I never really got to play halo when I was a kid because I never owned an xbox, and for a time I thought this was some great thing that I might have missed out on due to all the hype around the time of its release and all the nostalgia years after it but upon actually playing it and then subsequently replaying it just to be fair and give it another chance I discovered that I really didn'tI never really got to play halo when I was a kid because I never owned an xbox, and for a time I thought this was some great thing that I might have missed out on due to all the hype around the time of its release and all the nostalgia years after it but upon actually playing it and then subsequently replaying it just to be fair and give it another chance I discovered that I really didn't miss out on much. In fact I'm actually pretty glad that I never played it, because at the end of the day its an extremely mediocre game.

The first and most noticeable thing about the game that I found myself hating were the weapons and overall gunplay, the weapons in halo in addition to being completely uninspired have lackluster sound effects and animations for the most part, and many of the weapons are underpowered thus making the plasma pistol and pistol the best loadout for most of an individuals play through, unless of course you are playing on average difficulty which was so mind numbingly easy it made me contemplate suicide.

The assault rifle doesn't **** shoot straight, the plasma rifle does more dps than the plasma pistol but because of the regenerating shield system damage per shot ofter takes precedence over damage per second since(and this is much truer on harder difficulties than on lower ones) its best to stay fairly close to cover while shooting enemies so you can engage in the hide till you heal **** at your convenience, the needler pretty much requires you to empty half a clip into an enemy to kill it and is a boring weapon that doesn't require any semblance of skill to use properly, and the rocket launcher, shotgun, and sniper rifle rarely show up during the course of a play though which is disappointing because out of all the weapons in the game they are by far the best in the game due to their beefier sound effects and better functionality than the other weapons. Granted it might have made halo which is already easy even easier had these weapons showed up more often but there is nothing inherently wrong with a game being easy or inherently right with a game being hard. Difficulty is something I really only complain about when I dislike the underlying for the game being easy, in the case of halo what I dislike are projectile attacks that move so fast that they usually can't be dodged and the health system which allows one to soak up damage like a sponge and recover shields at his convenience, as well as the slow easy and tiresome gunplay and enemy types, which can hardly be said to require different tactics to beat. The grunts can be killed simply by shooting them with anything or throwing any grenade at them and if you kill their commanders they'll just run around and give you another opportunity to shoot them by running around like a couple of **** in spite of the fact that they were honestly pretty harmless to begin with, they are equipped with plasma pistols but for some mysterious reason they lack the ability to charge them up, you can pretty much just play peek a boo with them and slowly pick them off with any weapon before attacking the elites and because they never charge up their pistols you won't have to worry about losing your sheilds fighting them this way, additionally its entirely too easy to stick plasma grenades to them which ironically enough they happen to drop like candy upon dying, the jackals are only slightly more threatening than the grunts they for some mysterious reason can charge up their plasma pistols while the grunts cannot and the fact that they are equipped with the exact same weapon as most grunts is one of the things I dislike about the game, it simply does not take orthogonal enemy designs far enough, the strategy for dealing with jackals is pretty much the same as the strategy for dealing with elites; attack their weak spot and/or them with plasma then either attack their weak spot or hit them with anything till they are dead, alternatively meleeing them works pretty well if you are close enough and grenades are more effective against jackals than they are against elites because jackals are far more stationary but its still not a big enough difference in enemy design to make the game interesting and if you compare the orthogonal level designs in this game to the ones in say quake the difference is pretty clear. In quake you have hitscan enemies, that require you to take cover and pop in and out of it to shoot them, there is a dude with a grenade launcher that requires you to dodge his grenades(yes you can actually **** dodge most projectiles in that game instead of soaking them up like a sponge) and also tries to chainsaw you if you get close, and most of the enemies in that game require vastly differ methods of movement to to deal with their attacks and some are more effectively dealt with by certain weapons than with others.

I could say more about the game but I've reached the character limit, 5000 is far to few for a full length critique.…Expand

It's a plain shooter with stupid space characters, the same old weapons and a stupid plot. A lot of better games were seen on PC a couple of years earlier. But it has co-op, so it's not completely useless.

I'm been an FPS gamer for years and I figured Halo would be good when it came out. I heard a lot of good talk about it. Unfortunately, it was really just... crap. Some of the vehicles were fun for a few minutes, but beyond that the story is boring, the actual fighting is completely crap and really, it's just a poor game in general. This game is so hyped it's incredible. It I'm been an FPS gamer for years and I figured Halo would be good when it came out. I heard a lot of good talk about it. Unfortunately, it was really just... crap. Some of the vehicles were fun for a few minutes, but beyond that the story is boring, the actual fighting is completely crap and really, it's just a poor game in general. This game is so hyped it's incredible. It has a rating of 83 on PC as opposed to 97 on Xbox. Given that ALL FPS games are better on PCs, due to differences in controllers, I think this speaks for how smart console gamers are.…Expand

Halo... Let's see? The first time through it's good only because you want to know how the story is going to turn out. Then you play it again because it's been awhile but it's too easy now that you know what to do. Switch to legendary gives you a challenge but you still beat it only to see a marine hug an elite (let down) You trade it in cause you don't see Halo... Let's see? The first time through it's good only because you want to know how the story is going to turn out. Then you play it again because it's been awhile but it's too easy now that you know what to do. Switch to legendary gives you a challenge but you still beat it only to see a marine hug an elite (let down) You trade it in cause you don't see yourself playing it anymore. 3 months later there isn't anything else good to play so pick up halo again. Legendary is too easy, story line goes faster when you press X, done with it again. Time to try multiplayer... that goes over horribly cause you now relise how stupid the computer AI is. You get good at it have a few runing riots yet as you get killed by a "camper" with a pistol shot from all the way accross the screen the game get's annoying and you find it more fun to commit suicide so your team loses and you can go home faster. Suddenly Halo 2 is announced and you get some what excited to play that so you play Halo once again on legendary yet find it an utter bore and wonder why you are wasting your time once again on this game. Trailers for halo 2 make there way to the masses the insight hits aswell. Sure the cutscenes look wonderfull but the in game graphics not that much of a difference. Some new weapons, vehicles get damaged etc. You can't help to think how much this is going to be more of the same. Nov 9th 2004 hundreds of crazy losers line your store at midnight to have wet dreams about a guy in a green suit. 5 days later your employee have beaten the game just in time to tell you it's not worth your time. The story line in non-existent like *caugh* "Fable" and was more a tool to push halo 3 on the next xbox. So in conclusion no this is not a great game. To agree with other reviews: Aliens comparison the pillar of automn is the ship in Aliens, the master chief's armor is the marines outfits, guns too., Library=BORING, multiplayer never played half life but recall a game called QUAKE "lan party"!!!…Expand

Halo isn't a very good first person shooter. I know, I know. You're a Halo fanboy and you think I'm just a mindless hater. You think I'm just going along with the crowd. That I'm some sort of dude who enjoys hopping on bandwagons. Well, no... that's not really the case. I've thought about this for a long while. I've never liked Halo. Even back when it first came out in 2000, it didn'tHalo isn't a very good first person shooter. I know, I know. You're a Halo fanboy and you think I'm just a mindless hater. You think I'm just going along with the crowd. That I'm some sort of dude who enjoys hopping on bandwagons. Well, no... that's not really the case. I've thought about this for a long while. I've never liked Halo. Even back when it first came out in 2000, it didn't impress me. I'm not a guy who likes to be counter-culture, or go against popular opinion for its own sake. There are many popular games I do enjoy. It's not that at all. And here right now, I'm going to explain in detail why Halo is terrible, so you can't accuse me of being a mindless hater. The HUD of Halo is just annoying. Instead of being like other contemporary FPSs, Halo insists on representing all of its ammo onscreen as lots and lots of tiny bullets, instead of simple easy to read numbers. This is lame. There is no need to fill up the top corner of the screen with rows and rows of bullet symbols, just show us a **** number. Like... if it said 60 in the corner? That would be fine, that would work for me. I can read and count, I know what 60 means. 60 means that there are 60 rounds in my magazine, I don't need to see a ton of tiny **** bullets up there. Halo's universe is a complete ripoff of Aliens and various other scifi properties. This shows a startling dearth of imagination on Bungie's part. Seriously, it's not an homage, it's a straight ripoff. This is not subtle, this is hitting you over your head with a sledgehammer. The right way to do it would be something along the lines of Mass Effect. With ME, you can tell that the creators at BioWare had an appreciation and respect for scifi and were influenced by all those works, while creating their own unique and imaginative new universe. They had influences, they did not outright copy. Halo does not do this, Halo is the result of Bungie ripping off other scifi works and cobbling them all together. I find this deeply objectionable.

Let's look at Master Chief. Master Chief as a super soldier is a ripoff of a lot of stuff like BattleTech and Warhammer 40K. He has been surgically engineered to be a superhuman warrior, just like the Space Marines of the Imperium in WH40k. He is physically much larger then a normal human being and possesses much greater strength and athletic capabilities, just like Space Marines and also the genetically engineered Clan Elementals in BattleTech. Then he dons the advanced Mjolnir power armor. This power armor further enhances his strength and survivability in combat, just like Space Marine armor and Elemental suits. Starship Troopers is another example of scifi power armor. His training and origin story in "The Fall of Reach" novel even reads just like Robert Thurston's classic "The Way of the Clans" BattleTech novel. In the Halo novel, the Spartan program takes children and forms them into training cadres to teach them how to become highly capable and skilled soldiers. Their sole purpose is to become the best warrior mankind can produce. This is almost identical to the sibkos, or sibling companies, that the Clans use in BattleTech. If you liked The Fall of Reach, I recommend you go and check out "The Jade Phoenix Trilogy" omnibus edition, which contains "The Way of the Clans." You'll find that The Fall of Reach is simply a pale shadow of Thurston's work.

Most of what Halo rips off is Aliens, however. That's really the core complaint. Bungie just decided to watch Aliens a lot and uh... rip off the entire film. If they were making an Aliens FPS, this wouldn't be a problem. In fact, that would be great. However, I find it appalling that they ripped off this great film to create their brand new IP. That's incredibly distasteful. And no, it wasn't just ripping off the vague concept of a "space marine." Doom did that and that was fine. There is nothing wrong with taking a general concept like a "space marine" and doing your own thing with it. However, Bungie went far beyond just using that idea. They ripped off almost every element of Aliens. Let's take a closer look at the stuff they ripped off. Master Chief's cryo chamber at the beginning of Halo is a ripoff of the cryostasis chamber in Aliens. Same exact design and function. The Pelican dropship is a clear ripoff of Aliens' UD4L Cheyenne dropship. In Halo 3, there's even a cinematic cutscene that shows the **** layout of the Pelican, which has two seats, one lower down and to the right, with another elevated position on the left. This is almost identical to the **** positions on the Cheyenne. I'm not sure if any dropship pilot in a Halo game ever uttered the line, "We're in the pipe, 5 by 5." but it would not surprise me at all if they did.…Expand

Poor. Atrocious selection of weapons, and very limited unique enemies. The scenery has simply been multiplied a thousand times, so when you're playing campaign it feels like you're running through the same area again and again. Inferior shooter. Buy half-life instead.

How rubbish is this? Where is this big hype about it gone? Oh yes, its shite. This is like another game, so ok it is a good game and can be fun, but it still isn't a amazing game that I should have been so its a let down so the vote should be a let down as well!

Yeah... no. This game was not at all that great, i cant believe people compare it to the half life titles. The game offers no variety whatsoever, the multiplayer gets repetitive immediately after you finish your first match.

I recently bought an xbox with halo expecting it to be like everyone says. but when i do play it its alright at the start but damn does it get boring!! the levels are boring and are like the same. the monsters are corny and killing them are repetitive. and the weapons are lame. there needs to be more meatier weapons but all they got are stupid alien weapons which are boring to play with.I recently bought an xbox with halo expecting it to be like everyone says. but when i do play it its alright at the start but damn does it get boring!! the levels are boring and are like the same. the monsters are corny and killing them are repetitive. and the weapons are lame. there needs to be more meatier weapons but all they got are stupid alien weapons which are boring to play with. this game is soooooo over rated. there are so many better games out there.…Expand

Oh... My... God people... this game SUCKS. Its not fun... they put absolutely no thought into this game. theres like 5 weapons, and 5 eneimies the whole game. WOW such good variety. Why does everyone like it.. it sucks. the graphics are good and all but its super-repetitive and not fun.

Halo either deserves a '10' or a '0': '10' if you base the score on sales; the game's capacity in attracting new gamers to this form of electronic entertainment; on the measure of how much of a camoufalging influence 'hype' can have on the actual quality of a product; and on the potential for single game to save a video game console. However, Halo either deserves a '10' or a '0': '10' if you base the score on sales; the game's capacity in attracting new gamers to this form of electronic entertainment; on the measure of how much of a camoufalging influence 'hype' can have on the actual quality of a product; and on the potential for single game to save a video game console. However, it's '0' if you predicate your score on gameplay, originality, grpahics, sound and replay value. Given McDonald's and 50 Cent sell like hotcakes, have fans up the yin-yang and account for the livelyhoods of inumerable people, it's obvious success and popularity don't always equate to quality. As a game, Halo fails horribly. As a marketing tool, Halo literally HAS a halo!…Expand

Just had to post this after checking out the stats on this baby and coming across Founder's review. Dude, how many games have you actually played in your life? Never seen a tank in a game before? Come on. Never had a vehicle that other NPCs can ride in? We all have. Never been to school and learned how to write or spell? Or put together a cohesive sentence that accurately represents Just had to post this after checking out the stats on this baby and coming across Founder's review. Dude, how many games have you actually played in your life? Never seen a tank in a game before? Come on. Never had a vehicle that other NPCs can ride in? We all have. Never been to school and learned how to write or spell? Or put together a cohesive sentence that accurately represents a coherent thought? And you think Halo offers tactics? Buddy, tactics involves more than deciding what direction to walk in or having to make choices. It's about constructing a plan and following it through as YOUR ACTIONS HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. You cannot possibly have a linear tactical game. If you do, then what you're getting might look like tactics, but it ain't. …Expand

To the person who said "Someone name a better multiplayer console game"...how about perfect dark? I'm not saying Halo sucks. But it is truly the single most overrated game of all time. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't astounded by it like you people were. Maybe the brainwashing just didn't work on me like it did for you...

And they said Assassin's Creed was repetitive? As FPS games go, this is atrocious. Particularly multiplayer where it's like fighting in a cardboard box... "Where are they hiding? Oh. Over there. That's because the levels are so small"

Come on. This game was second rate at best. Plain enemies, boring weapons with no orginality (oh a rocket laucher WOW) and vehicles that have the steering of a blind guy in a truck. Tell me one thing about this game that was original. At least Gears of War tried new things, they changed combat from the 'run directly at you foe, strafing from left to right to 'dodge' Come on. This game was second rate at best. Plain enemies, boring weapons with no orginality (oh a rocket laucher WOW) and vehicles that have the steering of a blind guy in a truck. Tell me one thing about this game that was original. At least Gears of War tried new things, they changed combat from the 'run directly at you foe, strafing from left to right to 'dodge' bullets' gameplay, to something original. As for Halo 2, who wants to play as the guys you fought in the previous game. FPS died when this game was released, yet it will live on in Half-Life, Doom and Team Fortress.…Expand

This game, brings nothing new to any game-style. Stole weapons, and multiplayer from unreal (yet everyone is still saying omg, halo is so innovative) The story line is normal, nothing great, nothing all too astonishing. Truely, subpar game, horrible graphics for 2001 (Counterstrike has just about as good graphics as this and it was made in what 1995-7?). True, probably one of the This game, brings nothing new to any game-style. Stole weapons, and multiplayer from unreal (yet everyone is still saying omg, halo is so innovative) The story line is normal, nothing great, nothing all too astonishing. Truely, subpar game, horrible graphics for 2001 (Counterstrike has just about as good graphics as this and it was made in what 1995-7?). True, probably one of the xbox's better titles, but then again, there are probably a bunch that can beat this, easily. Halo: Combat Stole-from-Unreal. Is probably the right name for it. Nothing really evolved from anything. The starting area in Halo is even a ripoff of a fps I played a long time ago. I'm pretty sure that it was also unreal.…Expand

This game sucks. I mean guns? Haven't we seen this before? Men with hands? Uh..Remeber Goldeneye? Things and objects...haven't we seen this with counterstrike? What I'm really trying to say here is I'm a big nerd. I want bots because my only friends are 3-D and have helmets...remember Counterstrike (again!) Enough with the same crap...how dare you have vehicles with This game sucks. I mean guns? Haven't we seen this before? Men with hands? Uh..Remeber Goldeneye? Things and objects...haven't we seen this with counterstrike? What I'm really trying to say here is I'm a big nerd. I want bots because my only friends are 3-D and have helmets...remember Counterstrike (again!) Enough with the same crap...how dare you have vehicles with wheels. New game? Easy, medium and hard levels? Laughable…Expand

The most overrated game ever. To be fair, I'm not big on first person shooters, they annoy me to no end, but I had huge expectations for Halo. When I bought it I unwrapped it in my car and kissed the disc, having the naive concept that it would some how be the greatest game ever. I was wrong, sorely wrong. The second I started fighting off the baddies, I knew something was missing, The most overrated game ever. To be fair, I'm not big on first person shooters, they annoy me to no end, but I had huge expectations for Halo. When I bought it I unwrapped it in my car and kissed the disc, having the naive concept that it would some how be the greatest game ever. I was wrong, sorely wrong. The second I started fighting off the baddies, I knew something was missing, but I couldn't figure it out. As I kept playing, I realized that something wasn't MISSING, there just wasn't a whole lot their, like an old man with Alzheimiers. The story's crack pot, the weapons are suprisingly short shighted and limited and trying to pilot the worthog is like trying to fix a swiss army knife with astronauts gloves. At best a rental game just definitely way too much credit is given to this game.…Expand

What are you people thinking. Really. This game is terrible. There are about 4 types of guns and about 3 different types of enemies. Oh look! a monster! buts he's red, not blue! holy crap! what a different creature! its the same creature, but its a different color, which must make it different! Really people. This game is bad. Look at the PC. The game have much superior graphics, the What are you people thinking. Really. This game is terrible. There are about 4 types of guns and about 3 different types of enemies. Oh look! a monster! buts he's red, not blue! holy crap! what a different creature! its the same creature, but its a different color, which must make it different! Really people. This game is bad. Look at the PC. The game have much superior graphics, the controls are a hell of a lot easier to use, and to top it all off, the game costs less! Come on now people...smarten up. Buy a game actually WORTH your money.…Collapse

3 guns? Seriously? Not to mention the enemies who only have 2 !! We have to congratulate microsoft for this ridiculous game, games like zelda and mario already had better phases than this repetitive crap !!

When you finally set down the controller the first time, and eventually hunger or exhaustion do force all of us to take a break, Halo has pulled you completely into its world and started one of the best sci-fi gaming adventures of all time.